Relying purely on willpower is a losing game. When you’re trying to force yourself to do something that doesn’t align with your core nature, which includes your values and strengths, it will eventually drain and burn you out. Being aligned with your potential creates the kinetic energy to express and expand it in creative ways.

When a habit aligns with your core nature, it rejuvenates you and expands your natural capability. For example, if you value vitality and are athletic, you naturally incorporate more outdoor activities. You aren’t “forcing” yourself to do it; you’re doing it because it is the logical expression of your values. It doesn’t make sense for you not to be energetic and not do impactful things. You don’t even have to think about building a habit, because you are the habit. Your habit is part of your identity.

Identity is the synthesis of your nature with your nurture. When your nurture aligns mostly with your nature, it’s called an Aligned Identity; otherwise, it’s a Misaligned Identity.

But how do you find this alignment? It requires more than just “thinking about it”. It requires a systemic process I call the The Systemic Alignment Cycle.

The Systemic Alignment Cycle is essentially a more structured way to figure out what works for you in the long-term, and also reduces the number of things that don’t really work. Essentially, it consists of three phases of reflection, exploration, and integration. This combination of phases creates a foundation for you to find your true potential, which will transform naturally into a system of sustainable habits. A sustainable process requires three distinct phases:

This is the phase where you’re looking backward, trying to see if there are experiences that act as hints of your potential that you can test. You want to be mindful of past events that point to the things that rejuvenate you and feel natural. There are primarily two aspects of your experience to look out for: Naturalness and Rejuvenation. These two states will be crucial not just in the reflection phase, but also during exploration and integration.

Naturalness facilitates ease and promotes spontaneous initiative. Rejuvenation is deeply tied to our core values and emotional alignment. When combined, these two states cultivate a high degree of adaptability and creativity. You have the initiative to swiftly pivot around a new problem (Naturalness) while retaining the core values to ensure the pivot still moves you in a meaningful direction (Rejuvenation). The stability created by the rejuvenation aspect is crucial for the integration phase.

It’s also useful to be mindful of experiences that feel restrictive and draining, as it helps you filter your list down to activities that actually expand your potential. Instead of judging yourself too harshly for being incompetent in the past, simply look at the key activities you initiated often, which hints at the naturalness aspect. Why shouldn’t we be bogged down by our incompetence? Because when there’s uncertainty with our own potential, we often don’t give it enough of a chance to explore and refine it, leaving it as untapped potential.

For example, let’s take a look at a 22-year-old female computer science student reflecting on her career path. During her time in college, she gained various technical skills, but noticed that some came easily while others did not. She picked up UI/UX knowledge relatively quickly (naturalness) compared to computer programming. On top of that, she loved using design tools creatively and researching user aesthetics, so she tended to do that voluntarily (naturalness + rejuvenation).

However, when learning programming languages, she struggled to create her own logic to solve specific requirements (restrictive + draining). She notices the differences in her reactions towards these two experiences; one rejuvenates and expands her capability, while another makes her feel lost and restricted.

As she reflects more, she realizes her strength lies in visual creativity and design. Because of this realization, she decides to test if she can explore this strength further. She plans several activities to shape her UI/UX skills, such as direct learning, analyzing design work, reading books on creativity, and joining university clubs to expand her network. By identifying which activities rejuvenate and feel natural to her, she can expand her potential naturally, which requires less willpower to get started.

This is the phase where you’re trying to test what you assume about your own potential. Once you have the data, you don’t want to commit to a massive life change yet. You want to run a low-stakes experiment while still having a safety net to fall back onto before you invest deeply into it, which is very important if you’re planning on switching careers. You want to see if the system of activities or “habits” you plan out actually works on a smaller scale, and then gradually increase the scale if it’s working out. This serves as a testing ground to see if you get positive feedback from your direct learning and your surroundings.

Let’s look at the previous student example again. After planning her UI/UX activities, she tests if they actually expand her potential, which verifies her assumption about her natural capability and values. She notices that new ideas come naturally, and she doesn’t need to rely heavily on tutorials to create new designs.

As she gathers more confidence, she tests her abilities in a real-world setting, increasing the scale of the testing ground by volunteering to design aesthetic posters for a student club. As she does this, she gathers positive feedback from others. This validates her growth and reinforces her identity to the point where she begins to identify as a “UI/UX Designer”.

This is the “Moving Forward” phase.

If the experiment worked, you would optimize the system of activities to make it more sustainable, yet flexible. Flexibility is very important, especially in the age of automation and artificial intelligence, because you always want to be one step ahead of it; that’s how you remain relevant. This is why the reflection phase is important; as we align ourselves with an identity that both rejuvenates us and feels natural, it ensures adaptability into other areas that require similar tacit conceptual understanding.

If the experiment failed, meaning you cannot advance with it and it feels too restrictive, you discard it without guilt. If an activity drains you, that is sufficient proof to move on until you find something better, as you keep reflecting on what really works for you in the long-term. It’s important to remember that integration is also about subtraction, meaning at some point, you have to let go of the things that are no longer relevant to you, and integrate other things that expand your potential.

For example, being a UI/UX designer involves creativity, research, spatial and visual intelligence, and an aesthetic eye. These skills can pivot into other roles if you ever want to change careers, such as a 3D artist or interior designer. This is where a growth mindset is crucial; you don’t want to limit yourself to just one title.

If you’re able to align yourself with an identity in which its essence is flexible for you, and you have developed it throughout your career, it becomes easier to pivot to other careers that require similar tacit conceptual understanding because of the naturalness and rejuvenation aspect of it.

You might be wondering, “Does this mean I never need discipline?” No. But it changes the type of discipline you use.

When you try to build a habit that contradicts your nature, you are relying on “Push Discipline”. You have to shove yourself through resistance every single day. You are essentially paying an energy tax just to get started. Eventually, you go bankrupt, and the habit dies.

When you build a habit based on Alignment, you switch to “Pull Discipline”.

Here is how the habit solidifies over time:

Over time, this creates a compound effect. You stop trying to “build” the habit and start simply being the person who does it. The habit becomes unshakable not because you have superior willpower, but because the habit has become your source of energy.